The bill amends article 5 of Law No. 152 of May 22, 1975, concerning the protection of public order and identifiability of persons. (Legge 22 maggio 1975, n. 152, as amended, IL DIRITTO PENALE (last visited Aug. 9, 2011).) It would insert as the second paragraph in article 5 the stipulation that for security reasons it is prohibited, in conformity with the first paragraph, to wear feminine apparel called the burqa and niqab and any other garment or accessory capable of concealing the face of a person in all places and buildings that are public or open to the public. Paragraph 1, in part, prohibits the use of protective headgear or any other means to make recognition of a person difficult, in public places or places open to the public, without justified reason. According to the Associated Press, women who violate the ban could incur a fine of €100-300 (about US$143-428), and persons who force women to conceal their faces in public would be punishable by a fine of €30,000 (about US$43,000) and imprisonment for up to a year. (Italian Parliament Commission Approves Burqa Ban, AP (Aug. 3, 2011).)

In connection with the public wearing of full-face veils, the report submitted by Italy in March 2011 to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of the United Nations noted:

… the discussion about "veils" has been carried on jointly with the problem of security of the State and prevention of terrorism. In order to avoid different decisions of local authorities and to grant to all citizens equal treatment over the whole national territory, several bills were introduced, currently under discussion at the Parliament, intended to modify, in different ways, the public security law of No. 152 of May, 22 1975, which forbids the wearing of any scarf or other clothes that, covering the face, makes difficult to be identified by public authorities. (Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 9 of the Convention, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Periodic Reports of States Parties Due in 2009: Italy, CERD/C/ITA/16-18, at 16, ¶¶ 66 & 67 (June 21, 2011).)

The report goes on to discuss recent Italian jurisprudence on the matter, which has addressed the difficulty of applying the public security norms in question. It refers specifically to the Council of State (the highest administrative court) judgment No. 3076 of June 19, 2008, which affirmed that the religious or cultural motivations supporting the wearing of the veil do not constitute sufficient and justified grounds for the criminal offense configured in article 5 of Law No. 152. (Id.) It was not the Court's aim, the report states,

to give judgement on the nature of the veil or on its role as a religious symbol or on the willingness or not of wearing the veil. The judgement, rejecting a Mayor's ordinance prohibit [sic] the wearing of the veil in his city, stated that the public security requirements are guaranteed by the prohibition of use of any clothes covering the face during public manifestations and by the obligation, for those who wear a veil, to remove it upon request by public security authorities for security reasons, allowing personal identification of the person concerned. (Id.)

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